This Skin We're In by Dale Beermann

My Favorite Posts From the Last 6 Months

I realized a little while ago that I've been blogging, in some form or another, for about three years now.  This blog is just a small part of that, but I think that most of my best content has ended up here.

The blog has turned into a mix of writing about entrepreneurship and social media, for the most part.  I've had some interesting experiences, both as an entrepreneur myself and as the co-chair of an entrepreneurial committee for young professionals (still the only one of its kind that I know of), and most recently, in founding a non-profit for entrepreneurs.

This page post will be a rolling account of some of my favorite posts in those topics, so check back every so often to see what's here.

Entrepreneurship

1. Why the Term "Serial Entrepreneur" Makes Me Want to Vomit 2. Entrepreneur or Small Business Owner? Does it matter? 3. Innovation and Entrepreneurship: 9 Ways to Create New Opportunities

Social Media

1. What [Insert Primary Keyword Here] Taught Me About [Insert Secondary Keyword Here] 2. Social Media: Leveraging the Conversation

What's interesting about blogging is that your favorite posts are very rarely your readers' favorite posts. In addition, your readers favorite posts are very rarely your most commented on. If you have others that you like, please let me know.

What [Insert Primary Keyword Here] Taught Me About [Insert Secondary Keyword Here]

I really like blogging.  Mostly because I really like writing.  Two of my favorite classes in college were English and Modern Literature, yet somehow I ended up being a Computer Science major.  I still remember writing a paper about the literacy of the Simpsons.  I couldn't tell you a whole lot about most of the programs I wrote.

What I really love about blogging though are the things that I learn along the way.  The title of this post reflects that feeling.  It was actually a title I wrote because I got so sick of all of the "What Obama's Innauguration Speech Taught Me about Puppies" posts.  In fact, this was the second title I chose for the post.  At first it was "Why I Didn't Write Your Stupid Obama Post."  Then I realized that you can't really write an Obama post about how you don't like the way people use Obama posts to drive traffic.  I also think I'm a pretty nice person and I don't want to turn into someone who hides behind the thin veil of the internet.

In addition to the titles, I wrote up two complete posts to go with them before I wrote this one.  The first one was just a rant.  After the Obama post, I wrote one about how to write headlines.  I can't stand headlines that fit into the template defined by the title above and I wanted to try to give some advice.  I even did a bunch of research and had links to Copyblogger and ProBlogger.  But then I realized that I don't really want to write about blogging.  There are a lot of people that do that much better than I will ever be able to.

This is post number three, under the exact same title.  The title could have been "What Blogging Taught Me About Me," or something along those lines.  But that title sucks and I like to try to be witty (I usually fail). 

More importantly, this post is really about the whole process of blogging.  Everything I write about teaches me something along the way, whether it's through my own reflection or the conversations I help create.

My friend wrote a really good e-book about why students should be blogging.  Career wise, I agree with everything he has to say.  In addition, I think that it should be part of every liberal arts education (at UW-Madison, Comp. Sci. is in the College of Letters & Science.  Maybe that's why I made it through).  Obviously, because it "develops the student’s ratiocination and intellectual capabilities."

I've been telling a lot of people that they should start blogging recently, generally citing career prospects.  Your experiences as a blogger are worth just as much though, albeit in a slightly less tangible way.  So go start blogging and see what you find out about yourself.

Ning and Non-Profits: A Match Made in the Cloud

Image via CrunchBase

Yesterday, we announced that we were launching the website for a new non-profit, Propel Wisconsin Innovation.  I developed the site myself, but what really impressed me was the ease with which I was able to do it and the amazing value that Ning brings to the table, especially for a non-profit.

Features

Ning provides out-of-the-box social networks complete with member registration and profiles, blogs, RSS feeds, forums, events, groups, photos, videos, music, chat, and activity feeds.  As far as look and feel, different themes can be selected and customized fairly easily.  There is also an additional layer of customization in defining styles via CSS.  I did have to use this a bit more than I hoped, but with a bit of CSS knowledge it wasn't too bad.

HTML can be used to layout information in text boxes which can be dragged and dropped just like any other item.  Ning is also part of Open Social, letting you integrate third party widgets such as news feeds, sports scores, or just about anything.  If you require functionality that isn't available, it can almost certainly be implemented via an Open Social app or widget.

Cost

We use three premium services, for a total of $55 a month.  The services allow us to use our own domain name and remove the ads and promotional links to Ning.  To someone unfamiliar with Ning, we look very much like a home-grown site.  And had we been, there's a really good chance it would have cost us $5K-$10K to have all of this built and integrated, even with existing products such as phpBB.  With that kind of budget, we can host the site for well over 10 years at Ning's current price.

The only other costs associated with creating the site were the domain registration ($7.50 a year at GoDaddy) and the image for the header (~$15 at iStockPhoto).  I did already have copies of Photoshop and Illustrator so I'm not factoring that in.  Also, we're only using email forwarding for now.  GoDaddy provides email services at less that $2 a month so it's pretty minimal to run an entire website without having to host it yourself.

Benefits

The cost itself is an obvious benefit.  However, the fact that a non-profit can operate autonomously, sans web and email server, is a huge win.  You also get a lot of support with your products.  GoDaddy and Ning both have their own support but you have a large community of developers behind you as well.  In addition, the site itself will be fairly easy to maintain and because it's hosted with Ning your uptime is going to be fantastic.

What's Missing

It's pretty easy to add new pages in Ning but there is a lack of any sort of content management system.  The place where this really makes a difference is on the homepage where you have custom text boxes.  Removing them deletes the content permanently.  This could be achieved with some data export tools, which Ning should have anyway to pull data out of the forums.

Another feature that I'd like to see is the ability to create default user profiles.  The user profile is defined by the theme, but I'd like to be able to add widgets by default and rearrange things.  As far as I'm aware, this isn't possible.

The text boxes could also use some better visual formatting tools.  Having to write out HTML tables is a pain.  Lastly, Ning really needs to implement two-column themes (you can do it via CSS, but it's a hack).  All in all though, Ning did what I wanted it to.

Alternatives

There are a few options out there for doing some of this in different ways.  Change.org provides a lot of the same features listed above and is targetd at non-profits.  It doesn't seem that there's support for hosting it on your own domain though.  Wild Apricot has its own membership software and website creator.  It's prices are comparable to Ning and there seem to be more options for page layouts but I haven't used it

If you went the open source route, you could take a look at Drupal and Wordpress, but now you'll probably have to host it yourself, and you're losing a lot of the benefit that the white-label social networks give you.  More importantly, you need a developer, which might not be in the cards for a non-profit.

The Bottom Line

I've been doing website development off and on for about 10 years now.  I'm sure this means that I'm a bit more able to put a site like this together than most people but I can also tell you that I've been recommending Ning to everyone recently.  It took me two days to design and build a site that would have taken at least a month otherwise, probably wouldn't have looked as nice, and would have had a ton of bugs.  If you're thinking about creating a website for a non-profit, go check out http://www.propelwi.com and you can see the results yourself.

My Social, Social Media Experience

I went to my first Tweetup last weekend.  Before I say anything else, let me first point out how awesome it is that Madison has an amazing group of people doing this stuff.  For anyone interested, there's a social media breakfast being organized for a week from today as well: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23smbmad.

So I went to a Tweetup and I met some really cool people.  What struck me was that this is the culmination of what social media should be.  I had a few "real life" friends that I knew were going.  I also knew a few people through Twitter.  But everyone there I knew within three, and most likely two, degrees of freedom.  I'm a pretty social person but if that wasn't the case I might not have shown up.  I'm sure there are other people that feel this way.

This is why social media is so powerful.  You do what your peers do.  Social media provides a unique outlet to grow that network.  As marketers are realizing, it's also a unique opportunity to influence those people in ways that weren't possible before.  In any case, the reason that social media, and the Tweetup phenomenon, is so successful is that there is already an implicit level of trust in that network.

Social media is a lot of different things to a lot of different people.  A lot of people have been at work trying to define social media as well. For a humorous take on what it means to some people check out this post on fanboy.com.  To me though, Social media is a way to find other people interested in the same things that you are.

I think about how you met people with similar interests before social media.  Generally, it was through your group of friends.  If you were really motivated you might use the newspaper to find out about local hobbyist groups.  Way, way, way back in the day we actually had something similar to current social media through the old Bulletin Board Systems (Yes, I'm a geek, and yes, I dialed up to BBSes on our Apple II with a 300 baud modem).  Now, if I want to find someone near me who's interested in skiing, I can just search Twitter.  I love it.

For me, social media is all about enabling interaction with like-minded people, even if just digitally.  I had a great experience at my first Tweetup and I'll be sure to attend more in the future.  When I do though, I'll also be sure to explain to my girlfriend the Direct Message I got on my phone a little more clearly: "Great meeting you last night. We should definitely do that again sometime.  :)"

Social Media: Leveraging the Conversation

A lot of friends ask "What's the point of Twitter?"  I didn't understand either until I spent some time trying to figure it out.  Once I dug in I realized that Twitter, and the other microblogging sites, can be a great resource.

There is a good video about common uses of Twitter here.  However, it doesn't address some interesting ways in which you can use Twitter.  Here are a few others:

Market Research

I started using Twitter because I wanted to keep tabs on our competitors.  Social gaming is a pretty new area so it was a great way to see what people were saying about it.  I started discovering new competitors, learning who was running the companies I already knew about, and finding the bloggers who were talking about it.  It helped give me a much better picture of the marketplace.

Travel Updates

The most common use of Twitter is for regular status updates.  However, Twitter becomes a lot more useful in situations where you don't have access to other tools.  A lot of people use Twitter when they're traveling so that they can let everyone back home know how things are going.  You might not have time to send a mass email to all of your friends and family.  It's a lot easier to do short updates that everyone can follow when you're out of town.

Branching Out

Twitter is a great way to find experts in interesting fields.  Following their updates and reading their blog posts is a great way to learn new things.  While my company is doing social gaming I am also interested in entrepreneurship, blogging and professional development.  I would have never learned as much about these topics if it wasn't for Twitter.

The Local Community

Twitter is a great way to find people in your area that are interested in the same things you are.  I use it to connect with the tech community here in Madison.  Maybe you want to find everyone who plays golf in your city.  Whatever your interest, Twitter can be a great way to find others close by who also share it.

News

Did you know that a lot of media outlets are using Twitter for updates?  Chances are, a local TV station or newspaper in your area is using Twitter to post new headlines.  You might have to search a bit though.  Even though it's not on their website, the Badger Herald student newspaper here has a twitter account.

So how do you get the most out of Twitter?

1. Start with a purpose

As I mentioned, there are a lot of ways that you can use Twitter.  However, if you start poking around aimlessly, chances are you're not going to get a whole lot out of it.  Decide what it is you're looking for before you jump in, even if it's just a hobby or your favorite sports team. 

2. Follow the leader

Twitter's a bit of a popularity contest.  Still, for the most part, people have amassed their followers for a reason.  Once you've picked a topic that you're interested in, go find the people that are saying a lot about it.

When tracking was working this was a lot easier but you can still do it.  Head to http://search.twitter.com and enter some search terms.  Start clicking on people and see who they're following.  If someone has over 1,000 followers, most likely they have something interesting to say.  Click on the "Follow" button to track their updates.  You can always un-follow them later.

3. Search local tweets

For any search query, you can find out who's talking about it locally.  Using the search above, just add "near:city,state" (e.g. here).  It's a great idea to keep track of what's happening in your community and this makes it incredibly easy.

4. Create RSS Feeds

For the searches that you're really interested in, create RSS feeds for them to see when they're updated (I track what everyone's saying about Sharendipity here).  This is a lot easier than going back to the search page every couple of days.  Look for the icon on each of those search pages.  Clicking on it will get you to the RSS feed, which you can then add to the RSS reader of your choice.

5. Engage in the Conversation

I see a lot of people on Twitter that are following just a handful of people and have a couple following them back.  This is great if they're the only ones you're interested in.  But Twitter is really all about the conversation.  To get the most out of it you can't be a passerby, you have to take part.

Why Mainstream Media Will Always Exist

The previous two days were interesting ones in the office.  There was a bomb scare and a subsequent arrest in downtown Madison, WI.  We had a bird's eye view of the whole thing.  One of the local newspaper guys actually took pictures out of our window.  When police started taping off the Square again yesterday, I went to Twitter to find out if anyone was talking about it.  I was apparently the only one.

Before anyone on Twitter knew what was going on, the Capital Times had posted a news article.  It was probably a half-hour or hour before the police arrived.  Kudos.  I went to Twitter because it has been known to help news spread fairly quickly (earthquakes come to mind).  In those cases however, there were very large networks of people that were helping spread the news.  The problem is that Twitter, and social media in general, is about relationships and the resulting conversations.  When there are millions of conversations happening, you can't sift through all the noise to find the right information.  In the case of the earthquakes, if you're listening on Twitter you now know that an earthquake happened, you just don't know any information about it.

When the Madison bomb scare happened the Capital Times was monitoring the police scanner.  I'm sure that there are individuals that do this as well.  They could also post that information to Twitter.  But if they do then I need to be listening to Twitter for specific terms, such as "bomb" or "Madison."  But nobody was saying anything.  At least, not about what I was interested in anyway.  Instead, there are tons of references to "[fill in the blank] is the bomb," or MSG or Madison Ave.  So I just went to madison.com and found the link on their homepage.

I was actually disappointed.  I really believe that social media is going to change things.  But when you really need a definitive source for information, where are you going to go?  If it's to social media, then it's certainly to a trusted source who has a large network.   Therein lies the issue.  Mainstream media is defined as having a large audience.  Technical definitions aside, in some cases we need someone to believe and we need to know that we can get the right information from them when we need it.  I don't see social media filling this gap anytime soon.